


The Nara Codes

by R_4_L



Category: Naruto
Genre: Canon death of Nara Shikaku, Canon death of Yamanaka’s Inoichi, Ino-Shika-Cho Formation (Naruto), Mentions fourth shinobi war, Mentions third shinobi war, Shikaku and Yoshino are BAMF parents, codes, implied kidnapping attempts
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-07-16
Updated: 2020-07-16
Packaged: 2021-03-05 00:08:10
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,732
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25315078
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/R_4_L/pseuds/R_4_L
Summary: Shikamaru learns the truth behind the bickering and nagging he heard growing up and his respect for his parents just grows.  It changes how Shikamaru views his childhood.
Relationships: Nara Shikadai & Nara Shikamaru & Temari, Nara Shikaku/Nara Yoshino
Kudos: 42
Collections: Shikaku Week 2020





	The Nara Codes

He dropped everything and ran. He just let the files drop and ran. Naruto ran after him. When asked later, the blonde Hokage would say that if it was something that required his head advisor to rush out of the room, then it was going to be something that required his attention too.

Shikamaru hadn’t felt Ino in his head like this since the war. When he heard his former team mates voice bounce around his head, he was shocked, bu really didn’t think much about it. Ino had spent so much time in there when they were children that it really didn’t bother him. Until he really focused on what she said. 

He rushed through the hospital doors and ran up to the administration desk. “Where’d they take her?”

The poor nurse had no clue as to what was going on.

Naruto stood behind his best friend wrapping an arm around his shoulder and did his best to clarify. “Hey Reiko, we’re looking for any of the Nara’s that have been admitted recently either Temari or Yoshino-San? Or Ino? Do you know where we could find them?” 

“Oh sorry Hokage-Sama.” The nurse looked at her files told them what she knew, “Ino-san took Nara-San to see Lady Tsunade. Sakura-San is talking to Temari-San and her son.” She gave them the room numbers and then turned to answer another question posed to her.

Naruto could see the dilemma in Shikamaru’s eyes, and thought of a way to help. “Shikamaru, let’s go and see Temari and Shikadai first. Tsunade and Ino know where she is and will come there when they’re done. You’re son needs you now.” When the genius started to waver, he gave the final push. “Shika, I can send a clone over to Tsunade to let us know what’s going on?”

“Please.”

The clone rushed down a different hallway as the original followed Shikamaru to a non descript door. A quick knock and it opened to Sakura examining Shikadai on the table.

“Shika!” Temari’s cry had the Nara rushing to her side and pulling her close. Naruto moved into the room quietly closing the door behind him.

“Temari, what happened?” Shikamaru didn’t want to let go of his wife. The strong Suna nin was shaking in his arms but he needed to hold his son. Sakura understood his mood and handed over the infant.

“Take a moment Shika. Relax first. Temari and Shikadai are fine. They’re safe.” Sakura’s reassurance had both parents relaxing. Smiling even as Shikadai fell asleep against his father’s chest.

Naruto wanted to know what was going on. When it became obvious that Shikamaru was going to focus on his family, Naruto spoke up.

“Temari, can you tell us what happened?”

Temari took a shaky breathe before looking at the blonde who had become such an integral part of her family. “Shikadai and I were visiting with Ino and Yoshino. Ino was making tea because Yoshino was holding Shikadai and we were talking about how much he was like Shika as a child. She started to really reminisce about Shikaku.” Temari looked at her husband. They had been worried about Yoshino as she hadn’t seemed to really grieve over the loss of her husband. She had been holding everything in, and it wasn’t working. “Shika, she was crying and I don’t think she realized it. The tears were just.” Temari didn’t know how to explain it. “I wasn’t sure what to do. We were interrupted by Shinji Nara.”

“Shinji?” Shikamaru ran through everything he knew about Nara clan member. Shinji had declined the chance to go to the shinobi academy and instead decided to focus on the Nara deer and looking after them. He had just turned fourteen and there had never been a complaint about him that he knew about. “What did he say?”

Temari leaned her head against Shikamaru’s shoulder. “Nothing really. I mean he said the deer were in the paddock. I’d never heard him use that phrasing before.”

“Paddock? We don’t have a paddock? The deer are either in the field or the pasture?” Shikamaru looked over at Naruto.

Naruto gave a quick nod and formed another clone who left the room before asking the next question, “what happened next?”

“Yoshino flipped. It was like when Gaara was a kid. One minute she silently crying while holding her grandson, the next she had a kunai pulled out and after having thrown a couple of shiruken at me. It was like I was the enemy and she was protecting Shikadai from me.” Even just remembering it had Temari shaking. In the three years that she had been married to Shikamaru, Yoshino had treated her as a daughter. It had meant the world to Temari would could barely remember her own mother.

“But mom loves you?” Shikamaru was so confused. What the hell was going on. “What did Ino do?”

“Ino was in the room when Shinji delivered his message and when Yoshino attacked, she jumped into her mind as soon as she could and we walked her here. She had me go with Sakura and asked for Lady Tsunade to look at Yoshino. Her body is still back at the house.” Temari wanted to be strong, but this had shaken her to the core.

“Ino retrieved her body and is in with Yoshino.” Naruto commented, “she called in Chouza-San too.”

“Chouza?” Shikamaru was confused. What did his best friend’s father have to do with this?

Another knock at the door showed Ino, Tsunade and Chouza. He supposed his questions would be answered soon. “Chouza-Jii?” Shikamaru was shocked by how tired and old his father’s best friend looked. “What happened Jii-San?”

Chouza looked over at Shikamaru. The spitting image of his friend, just missing the scars. The babe sleeping in his arms reminded him of times he’d gone round to the Nara compound to find Shikaku taking care of Shikamaru while Yoshino had been out on a mission. He missed his friends. 

“Ino-Chan, Shika-kun, I’m sorry. I never thought that- Well.” He didn’t know how to tell them what happened. How to begin.

“Start at the beginning Chouza. Give them the background.” Tsunade rubbed the older man’s back, trying to relax him and stave off a guilt induced panic attack. “The rest of you hold your questions.”

Chouza started, “Ino you know that your mother grew up as a civilian. She never knew what it was to be a shinobi. Inoichi did his best, hell, we all did; to protect her from the harshness of shinobi life. Yoshino was different. She was an active shinobi until the end of the third war. Sure she didn’t take many long term missions, but she was still active. You need to remember that Shikaku and Yoshino were married formally right after the third war, but had been together long before that. Shikamaru, your parents were paranoid for your safety. After the war there had been a number of kidnapping attempts on many clan homes. We all set up passcodes and traps for anyone entering clan lands or the homes of the Clan Head. It was one of the reasons Inoichi set up the flower shop. He had a couple of retired ANBU helping out.” Chouza smiled at the memory of Ino playing the back room of the flower shop surrounded by retired ANBU officers, there had been no safer child in view of the village. “With Shikaku being Jonin Commander he couldn’t be home as often as he wanted to, but he and Yoshino had a number of code words that they used. It was how they let each other know they were safe and that you were safe.”

“What do you mean?” Shikamaru was pretty sure that he knew all of his father’s codes.

“If your father came home and his first sentence was about how troublesome his day was; that was to let your mother know that the village was safe. If he talked about the forest first that meant we needed to be on watch because there were foreign shinobi in the village. If he brought up the deer it meant danger near by, and to let no one on Clan Land but Nara. Yoshino’s comments about her day to your father were reports on how things were on the compound. If there was anything that needed to be investigated or if things were fine. It seems that between Yoshino talking about you being a child, Shikadai looking so much like Shikamaru as a child, her not accepting her grief as well as she could have. Well, Shinji just happened to say a trigger phrase. ‘The deer are in the paddock’ pretty much meant that the clan house had been infiltrated.”

“So basically it was a ‘code red’ call” Naruto may not understand everything Chouza was saying, but the idea that Yoshino and Shikaku would want to protect Shikamaru using a code word wasn’t surprising.

Chouza smiled over at the blonde. He really was the best of Kushina and Minato. He’d have to make sure that he took some time to sit down and tell the boy what stories he had about the pair. “Yeah, basically. She was trapped in a memory from the past and reacted.”

“Shikamaru, Temari, we are treating her now. She’s woken up, if you want to use that phrase and is beside herself in fear that she hurt Temari and has pushed you both away.” Tsunade knew this conversation needed to happen, but she didn’t want to keep her patient alone too much longer.

“Oh mom,” Shikamaru was torn again between being with his mother and his wife and son.

“We need to get her into counseling for her grief.” Tsunade had an idea and thanks to Iruka forcing the issue when Kakashi had been Hokage there was actually a system in place for it.

“Can we go and see her?“ Temari looked over at her husband. “She needs us Shika, she’s going to think I blame her and will be afraid that we’re going to ban her from seeing Shikadai and that’s not the case. We can make sure she gets the help she needs, that we all need.”

“Have I mentioned that I love you lately?” Shikamaru kissed his wife, then looked at Lady Tsunade. “Where is she?”

Yoshino sat in the hospital room. She couldn’t believe that she had done that. How could she have every attacked her daughter-in-law. She loved Temari, the Suna nin had a way of bringing out the best in Shikamaru.

“Nara-San?” The Naruto clone had been standing in the corner for the last hour. “You know when I first got back from training with with Pervy Sage all my friends were on their own missions. They had their own lives and I felt lost. I mean Kakashi-sensei was busy and he had passed our team off to Captain Yamato and we had Sai on our team, someone new to get used to. After a failed mission where I hurt Sakura, I was really feeling out place and guilty. Shikaku-San zeroed in on that and he cornered me. He said he wanted to help me again. He tried to teach me Shoji.”

Yoshino didn’t mean to but she laughed.

“Yeah, it was a complete failure, I mean I’m sure that Kiba can beat me. Anyway, you know how Shikaku never did anything without a Shoji board unless it was work related and I guess I wasn’t quite work related. You know how I grew up and he told me what you both tried to do.” Naruto never brought up the number of people that had tried to adopt him but were denied for one reason or another. It warmed his heart to find out which families had wanted him, that they were the same families of his closest friends. “When I lost Pervy Sage it was Shikamaru that helped me past it, he was my pillar of support. He talked about what he had learned from Shikaku when Asuma-sensei died. I still use the advice given by both of them. It you and Shikaku who helped him be that.” Naruto just kept talking, trying to let her know that she wasn’t alone.

“Mom, can we come in?” Shikamaru peeked his head around the corner.

“Shika?” Yoshino was on the verge of tears again as her son and his family made their way into the room. 

Naruto watched at how awkward they were with each other. He could see the regrets and fear in Yoshino’s eyes just as he could see the regret in Shikamaru’s. Temari, for once, seemed unsure of herself. He shook his head and moved. Reaching out he pulled Shikadai out of Shikamaru’s arms and deposited him directly into Yoshino’s “See, he needs his Ba-San.”

They watched the way little Shikadai Nara reached Yoshino’s hair and smiled.

Shikamaru moved closer, pulling his mother into a hug. “It’s okay mom. It’s okay.”

Temari moved into the circle, “Oka-San, it’s okay, we’re safe.” She’d never called the woman mother before but it felt right now. “We’ll work on this together.”

Three weeks later Naruto walked into Shikamaru’s office. He signaled to the ANBU guard to leave. He was lucky that his advisor was focusing on his paperwork and ignoring him for once.

“Shikamaru? Do you have a minute?”

Shikamaru looked up and the focused more when he realized they were truly alone. “Naruto?” He was wary, it wasn’t often his friend dismissed the ANBU guard, and when he didn’t it was normally because he was going to do something hairbrained. Shikamaru really didn’t want to reign his friend in right now. He didn’t have the energy.

“I wanted to ask, how’s you mom?”

Shikamaru almost wilted. Leave it to Naruto to dismiss the guard in order for him to save face. “She’s doing better. We’ve all been going to therapy. Mom and I to deal with dad’s death and the three of us deal with general PTSD. I guess she had been going through some of Dad’s things the night before her attack on top of everything.” The number of triggers and coincidence that his mother had stacked against her the day she had inadvertently attack Temari just blew Shikamaru away. Shinji had used the phrase ‘paddock’ because he had momentarily forgotten the word for ‘pasture’. 

“That’s good.” Naruto had made it mandatory that all front line survivors to see a councillor.

“All those times when dad came home and I remember hearing him talk about his day being troublesome and mom yelling from the kitchen about something he hadn’t done. I always thought she was nagging him. Complaining because he didn’t do enough around the house.” Shikamaru reached for a cup of coffee that had been sitting on his desk for hours now, “I used to think about how much I didn’t want a marriage like their’s because mom was stuck at home looking after me. She always seemed to be mad at dad when he came home. Upset when he’d go out to the pasture and fall asleep. Except he wasn’t asleep in the field, he was checking the wards he had set up, checking with the deer that all was well. When she left in a huff to feed the deer, she had been training, they both had been. They had been using code all along.”

“Shikamaru, what is it that you’re really upset about?” Naruto knew that Shikamaru would try to hide his real feelings. He needed to pry it out him.

“I don’t think I’m upset. I mean I’m upset that I under estimated what my parent’s relationship was like, but really I’m just freaking amazed. My mom and dad set up an intricate set of codes with levels of fail safes just to ensure that not only was I kept safe, but that other clan heirs were as well without making any of us children aware of it. Naruto I am so damn proud of them. I hope I can be as good a parent as were.”

Naruto just smiled, “Shikamaru, you’re already a great dad. Like you said you had excellent role models. Just make sure that you tell your mom that okay? She needs to know how much you appreciate her too. Now go home and spend time with your family. The day is done.”

**Author's Note:**

> July 25/2020 spelling and grammar edits
> 
> Dec 12/ 2020 revised


End file.
